Whenever a business entity comes to dominate its field, there will inevitably be complaints and genuine dissatisfaction. I've been far from impressed with Google's dedication to customer service.
It's early to know how much of the negativity surrounding the brand lately is fully warranted, but there may be signs that Google is becoming increasingly unpopular in thought, if not yet deed.
Love this observation!
Posted by: chrys | Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 03:50 PM
Google has an interesting outlook and a wonderful theory on integration... but they have the theory and practice conundrum to work against. They want to integrate their services so as to make them easier but not to be open to competition. Going so far as to favor their stuff so heavily as to not even give the competition a normal rating on searches, is dishonest and will lose them customers. I don't mind the gmail service, even when I am not using Firefox and a slew of things to get webpages to play nice, Google's included. But undermining their fundamentals will lose trust rapidly, and there are a number of other search services that will do just as well. They appear not to realize that they won trust by being fast and efficient and non-discriminatory on searches. They are losing that very same trust for becoming biased, censorship and discriminating against the competition. Perfectly allowable to do those things, just don't expect to keep the trust won by doing so.
At some point I will be hopping blog/hosting services as I have run into some limitation on Google's. I don't like the technical problems and attitude, so the time to jump ship is coming and soon. I will keep the gmail, but I do other things for other services based on need and capability. Google Earth has no peer on the free side, so will remain. Their photo integration is junk and I do a better job with the tools I have paid for... but then that is why I paid for them. So the search is going on... and I will only keep those few things I need and the rest can prove themselves or not, but without any inherent trust up front. They squandered that, for me at least...
Posted by: ajacksonian | Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 04:22 PM
Google are a bunch of techno-neo-lib-neo-crypto-fascists.
"Don't be evil" - indeed. Indeed.
Posted by: Purple Avenger | Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 06:44 PM